McCain pays visit to Latin America

by Chris Hawley - Jul. 1, 2008 09:14 PMThe Republic | azcentral.com

CARTAGENA, Colombia – John McCain urged Colombia to try to free a U.S. pilot and two other Americans held by leftist guerrillas, an echo of his own time as a POW, as he pledged support on Tuesday for this South American country struggling to emerge from 44 years of civil war.

McCain also urged Congress to ratify a free trade agreement with Colombia as part of efforts to bolster its economy and wean rural peasants off the cocaine trade.

The Republican presidential candidate made the comments during an unusual campaign stop in the Colombian port city of Cartagena, a visit meant to showcase his foreign-policy experience and pro-business credentials.

McCain praised President Alvaro Uribe’s fight against leftist guerrillas, a battle that the United States has aided with more than $6.2 billion in mostly military aid since 2000.

Several leaders of the main Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have been killed or given themselves up in recent months.

“I want to urge you to continue your efforts, as I know you will, to free those people who are being held by the FARC, including … the three American citizens who have been held for a number of years,” McCain told Uribe during a joint news conference.

He was referring to Marc Gonsalves, Keith Stansell, and pilot Thomas Howes, three military contractors who were captured by the FARC after their plane crashed in Colombia in February 2003. FARC guerrillas killed the other American pilot, Tom Janis, and a Colombian military intelligence officer who was on board.

McCain, a Navy pilot, was shot down over Hanoi and was held as a prisoner of war from 1967 to 1973.

McCain arrived in Cartagena, a colonial port on the Caribbean Sea, on Tuesday evening in a Boeing 737 newly painted with his name and the “The Straight Talk Express.” The name is a throwback to the campaign bus that McCain used during his 2000 presidential campaign.

He met with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe at the Casa de Huespedes Ilustres, the Colombian version of Camp David, on the grounds of a naval academy across the bay from Cartagena’s colonial district.

During a joint news conference, he urged the U.S. Congress to ratify the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, a pact negotiated in 2006 but stuck in the House of Representatives since April. His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, opposes the treaty, citing alleged environmental, labor and human rights violations in Colombia.

“Free trade is an important issue, not only for Colombia, but to the economy of the world,” he said, adding that he supports job retraining for displaced workers “who will face the challenges that America’s economy is undergoing as we speak.”

The free trade treaty arrived in Congress for ratification last year, as Americans began to worry about the economy and presidential candidates began wooing states like Ohio and Michigan that have seen manufacturing jobs head overseas.

In April, the House of Representatives voted to postpone a vote on the pact indefinitely.

That decision has dismayed Colombians.

“There’s a national sense of incredulity,” said Alejandro Vélez, vice president of the Farmers’ Society of Colombia. “We feel mistreated by the U.S. Congress.”

Colombian officials say an economically strong Colombia could serve as a counterweight to left-leaning regimes in nearby Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia, but that the country needs a leg up from the United States.

“Colombia needs to make up for those years in which our poverty grew because of the violence,” said Carolina Barco, Colombia’s ambassador to Washington.

Human rights groups have urged lawmakers to wait on the bill, saying Colombia needs to crack down on killings of labor activists. More than 25 trade unionists have been killed this year, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch, though Barco noted that about half were teachers, not industrial or agricultural workers.

On Tuesday, American unions attacked McCain for backing the trade deal.

“Working people have seen bad trade deals send their jobs overseas and decimate their communities,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a written statement. The teamsters union ran a radio ad saying McCain was “plotting with government leaders to shove a so-called free trade agreement down the throats of the American public.”

Colombia already does some $18 billion in trade with the United States, with gold, emeralds, coffee and oil leading the South American country’s exports. Colombia is also the United States’ biggest foreign supplier of cut flowers like roses and carnations.
Many of Colombia’s exports, like coffee and bananas, already enjoy trade perks under other U.S. laws.

But Colombians want to make sure they’re permanent.

“It’s a matter of stability,” said Vélez. “We want to make sure our farmers can always count on having a market, because if they don’t have options, they will turn to coca.”

Some Colombians worry that the United States would benefit most from the pact, however. The agreement would immediately eliminate tariffs on 80 percent of American exports to Colombia, with the rest being phased out over 10 years.

“It’s a way of making us more dependent on U.S. goods,” said Rep. German Enrique Reyes, a lawmaker for the liberal Alternative Democratic Pole. “Free trade is an attack on national government governments.”

On Wednesday McCain was to visit a naval base and ride on a high-speed boat used by the Colombian military to chase down drug smugglers. He then departs for Mexico, where he is expected to discuss illegal immigration, trade and a new $400 million package of anti-drug aid approved by Congress last week.

Though McCain was traveling with his campaign staff and on his campaign plane, both he and Uribe carefully avoided any direct mention of the U.S. presidential race. Uribe said he looked forward to working with both Democrats and Republicans as Colombia pushes forward in its offensive against the leftists.

“We still have far to go but we’ve made progress, and we are confident that the United States will maintain its bipartisan support for Colombia,” Uribe said. He also said he viewed “recent comments by Sen. Obama regarding Colombia as positive,” but did not elaborate.